High rise buildings have long been equipped with complex, one or two stage integrated fire alarm and voice communications systems designed to manually or automatically notify occupants of potential fire or emergency situations. The two stage system and/or voice communication component allows staff to take control of the system and broadcast essential voice messages when, and as required, in order to manage a staged evacuation process involving hundreds or even thousands of evacuees where immediate total evacuation may not be in the best interest of the building occupants.
Owners of buildings are responsible for the fire alarm and voice communications system and for personnel training on the use of these systems. Because these systems are always in operation, training is next to impossible and rarely happens. If training were conducted, it would have to be outside of regular business hours when the building occupants are not present which can be expensive in consideration of overtime paid to staff. Furthermore, it can be time consuming and problematic to reset the system before and after training and to notify fire and other emergency response departments that any alarms are as a result of training and not real emergencies. In addition, these systems respond in real-time with equipment spread throughout the building which does not lend itself to any degree of proper training.
The lack of staff training at the emergency location results in further problems for responding fire department officers and other emergency response personnel who are faced with building staff who are not fully trained and therefore the officers must determine system operations at the time of the incident. Their burden is complicated by the range of different systems installed in buildings. This burden results in a loss of critical time which leads to further complications and the possible escalation of a crisis situation.
Furthermore, at the present time, fire departments and other emergency response teams do not have a means of receiving training in using the various building emergency systems or managing building evacuations.
There, therefore, is a need for a training system for fire departments and other emergency response teams to become familiar with the various building emergency and communications systems. There also is a need for building personnel to receive training in the emergency systems and emergency procedures in preparation for real life crisis situations.